Book Review: Guardian of the Dead

TITLE: Guardian of the Dead
AUTHOR: Karen Healey
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: urban fantasy
PREMISE: ....I honestly have no freaking idea HOW to describe this book...
MY REVIEW: This book was just...wierd. Not the good kind of wierd either, such as the wierdness in the Haruhi Suzimiya series. This was just wierd in a I didn't know what was going on half the time. It started off okay but then it just got to be an utterly confusing mess and I'm one of those that can usually follow a complicated plot. It honestly wasn't that the plot was confusing, it was just that the author failed to explain things properly and that did not help the book any.
I will say I'm happy the author was creative and wasn't using all the common tropes in YA nowadays (no love triangle!). I also found the diversity in the cast refreshing. I even want to commend the author for being brave enough to put in an asexual male character. I have yet to see an asexual person in a YA book so I'm pretty sure Healey is the first to do this. So that was nice to see. I also will even admit the mythology used was interesting as it's not mythology I'm familiar with and I always like learning new myths. However, that's not enough for me to say this book is actually good. Because it still was a very flawed book. The main character is rather Mary-Sueish, the characters kept drawing conclusions out of thin air with little to no evidence and had me going huh? half the time which only added to the confusion, also the romance? Pretty lame. Even by YA standards.
In short this book had some great ideas but the execution was a big hot mess. The author needs to take time to explain things more. Especially as much of this took place in New Zealand and most Americans (and people in other countries I'm guessing) know next to nothing about this country so a lot of the cultural references/jokes she put were totally lost on me and probably will be lost on all readers not from New Zealand. The author has potential, that's for sure. But her writing needs a lot of polishing before she can be called good.
WHO SHOULD READ: Um...I have no idea, sorry
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five masks

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